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(Archive) The Hunt (Prologue)
It had walked like a man once. No longer. Arms and legs as long as a man were tall sprawled out in a tangled heap beneath it. Greasy grey hair hung about a face long since twisted into a permanent grimace of hate and rage. Below clouded, unblinking eyes lashed a tongue as long as a serpent and just as violent in its death throes. Despite its best efforts, the bloated belly that hung low between its legs like a deflated balloon still wept the blood that had once inflated it. The rest of the grave never ceased its endless hunger. “Wh-what was that thing?!” Someone cried out, their voice tight, strained with fear. It might have been me. The others slowly, almost reluctantly lowered their meat cleavers and pitchforks, stepping closer. We were not warriors. Most of us could barely hold our own in a proper fist-fight. Garbed in the thickest clothes we owned and bearing any sharp implement we could swing with ease, we were unprepared for this level of savagery. But the Hunters were. A long coat as black as the night sky above worn over studded leathers made them look eerily at home on the fringes of the dim light of our torches. A wide brimmed hat cast their faces in shadows, so that not even we could see their expressions. The older of the pair, Aedruk, stepped closer and puffed out a breath of air. His long, curly greying hair fluttered out of his face for a moment before falling right back in place. It seemed enough for him, as he looked down at the corpse thoughtfully. He was a weathered man of dark complection, bearing a few spots from age and more wrinkles than a graveworm. But his hands were as steady as a surgeons and the spike tipped cane he bore was drenched in crimson. “Gaunt Leech. Slightly starved. We’re too close to Cainhurst.” “We’ll turn back, then,” started the younger Hunter, Tark, as he stood up from wiping the tainted blood from his blade on the trampled grass. He was a fair man, in stark contrast to his mentor, with fiery red hair and big ears. Blood speckled his clothes in spots of red darkening to black and the blade gleamed wetly in the torchlight. It was a curved affair, wider just before the end than where the blade met the hilt, but sharpened on both sides. The bone-styled haft of the longer staff portion was already tucked back into the weapon sling at his back, bent double like a crooked elbow. I had seen how quickly they could bring their blades to bear with brutal efficiency not moments ago. I was not keen to see it again. “We have slain the beasts closest to the city. No further threats will plague the people this night.” Tark’s tone was calm, measured, confident. Aedruk’s hoarse rasp rolled over those words like the tide. “No. The night is young. The Beasts prowl these woods. Yharnam is a mere hour’s walk from here and they can make the trip faster than six able bodied men and an old bastard. We continue.” Coal could have been pressed into diamond between the brows of that young Hunter with how hard he frowned. He stepped closer to his partner, tucking the blade into its sheath at his hip without so much as glancing down, and spoke quietly. Some of the other townsfolk gathered around the back end of the Leech, away from its writhing tongue, and began chattering amongst themselves. Idle talk to ward away nerves frayed after the adrenalin had begun to ebb. “You seen’t that face, right? Lookin’ a wee bit like that there Jameson boy what beat on his wife.” “Oh, aye, aye, the one what up and run out on her not a week ago? Greedy lecher, that one. Don’t know he could’a turned into that, though…” “With a face like that’n, I reckon it looks more like your wife, hoss.” “Oi, take that back!” “Definitely your wife, even got the same tongue!” I paid my fellows no mind. They had nerves to settle, much as I did, but I had been standing closer to the Hunters than they had. Clutching my sharpened rake to me like a cane to support my weight, I put my back to the pair and stared down at the corpse as if in shock. The Hunters were just close enough for me to hear bits of their conversation. The commotion from the others made it no easier, but I could just make out patches if I listened hard enough. “...don’t need to continue. You’re not a part of the dream anymore…” “Of course, we have to… ...know what kind of things are lurking out there!” The older one hissed in reply, his tone bordering on poorly restrained fury. I had never known Hunters to be so volatile. “There will be more… On another night, we… ...what was started--” A twig snapped beyond the brush just past where the Hunters argued. All of us whirled and stared at the spot, silent as the grave. Our quarrels forgotten, we strained our ears for long, tense moments. Sweat beaded on every brow and the chill of the night air settled into the gaps in our clothes. After a minute that seemed more like a lifetime, the old Hunter relaxed and looked back to the younger man. Stretching one finger out to prod him in the chest, he said simply, “We continue.” A grimace touched Tark’s features, but quickly melted into a wide-eyed stare as the blood drained from his face. Aedruk did not even have time to turn before it struck. Earth exploded upward from between and beneath the two men. Tark went flying into a nearby bush amid clods of dirt and grass. Aedruk was less fortunate. Fat, slimy tendrils encircled his waist and squeezed him tight as they drew the Hunter back toward a gaping maw. This monstrosity looked like no creature I had ever seen before. Rotund and faintly reminiscent of a slug, its head and the tendrils that sat at either ear sprouted from the ground like a gruesome mole. Dark eyes glittering with feral intelligence glared daggers around at the lot of us. If looks could kill, we would have surely been dead already. The tentacles constricted further and Aedruk let out a strangled wail of pain. The slime upon them and around this abomination sizzled and burned, searing away the black Hunter’s garb he wore. Where it touched flesh, I had no doubt it burned that away, too. It snarled something in a language that sounded like a violation of any known tongue. If I had not been so struck with fear, I would have been equally dumbfounded that it could manage proper speech. One of the other townsfolk reacted first, charging the thing with his pitchfork raised. The slug smashed him flat in a sickening crunch and a spray of gore with one of its psuedopods. The iron never even touched its vile hide. Then Tark was lunging out of the shrubs on the far side of the creature where it could not see. His blade gleamed in the torchlight like a crescent moon upon its bone-haft as he swept it high and then low. The tendril clutching his mentor took the brunt of both blows, blood spraying out from the wide gashes rent in it. Their owner shrieked in hate and rage, and the battle was joined. Aedruk and the tentacle holding him tight swept at the nimble Hunter who ducked low, but not low enough. A snarl of pain hit the night air as the rest of us leapt to his aid. Bone crunched as another villager was swept aside by a greasy limb, landing in a heap some ten feet away. Iron cleavers, smith’s hammers, fire irons, and even my own sharpened rake swept at the thing’s hide. All did no more than if we had hurled pebbles at it. When we moved to swing a second time, all discovered chunks missing from their weapons as acid chewed through the metal as if it were warm butter. One particularly lucky sledgehammer blow caught the aberration in the face at just the same moment that Tark’s scythe struck again. The tendril released Audruk and the old Hunter fell to the ground, still writhing in pain. Acid had chewed through his coat and most of his armor, leaving spots of slick red flesh bare to the cold air. “No,” he wailed hoarsely, the venom in his voice steadily growing as he steeled himself against the pain. “No, no, no! I won’t die like this to some overgrown maggot!” Aedruk’s voice changed as his muscles bulged huge and grotesque beneath what remained of his coat. It took on a feral quality, dropping several octaves until it sounded monstrous. The sort of voice that could not come from a man. When his flesh began to tear and split beneath the weight of the change, it was clear what he was becoming. The others did not notice, consumed as they were in their fight to merely survive this creature’s wrath. But I saw. A flurry of shredded black coat and greasy grey locks on long loping strides leapt toward the slug-thing. Claws as black as the sky above carved long furrows into its thick hide. Tentacles pummelled the hairy Beast in return, sending the acrid scent of burnt hair and sizzling flesh into our noses. The Beast towered over all of us, but it stood nearly the same height as the fleshy abomination that had sprouted from the earth. I staggered backwards, away from the chaos of the melee, and saw that the other townsfolk did much the same. Two fled a short way toward the woods while another tried to escape into a bush. Only one man made it, the other two easily carved to ribbons by black claws or squashed to paste by fat tendrils. The pair of titans barely spared a glance to the one who got away, fixated on tearing each other apart. Slime splattered and blood boiled. Then, just as quickly as it began, it was over. Claws glistening with sizzling bile opened the throat of the aberration in a wide gout of arterial spray. It flopped limply to the side as the life faded from its wide eyes. The Beast huffed a derisive snort and turned on clawed feet. Turned to look directly at me. Its nostrils flared as it drank in the heady aroma of blood on the air and the stench, no doubt, of my fear. Drool slithered from fangs as long as one of my fingers and it let out a low, rumbling growl that seemed to make the very trees around me quake. It took one heavy step toward me. And then another. And another. Its head blotted out the yawning yellow moon above and cast me in deep shadows. I saw the whites of its bloodshot eyes around the rim of endless black. My heart leapt up to my throat when the growl abruptly petered off into a wheezing hiss. The Beast teetered in place and for a moment I was certain that it would fall upon me like a pack of ravenous wolves. Instead, it toppled to one knee and then off to the side in a limp heap. Just behind it stood Tark, his scythe’s blade gleaming scarlet in the chill of the night air. “Wh-what was that thing?” I heard myself gasp out. Tark did not answer for a long moment. The wind whistled through the trees around us, the night seeming far too still now that the heat of battle had begun to die down. My pulse thundered in my ears. I thought for a second that I might have seen the sheen of wet upon the young Hunter’s cheeks, but he tugged his pointed hat down lower over his features. When he spoke up, his voice was a ragged, tortured whisper. “Something...else. Something new. There have been more of them every night. Not one of the Beasts. Not like Aedruk…” The cold grip of stark terror never drew its fingers from around my heart as my gaze turned back to the Beast again. It had walked like a man once. No longer. Now, the Beast that lay silent and still had once been Aedruk. Now, the blood that speckled Tark’s fair skin belonged to his partner. Now, I could never look at Hunters the same. Category:Yharnam Update Category:Lore Category:Archives